An ex-prostitute told a court in Lille, France, 138 miles north of Paris, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn forced her to have brutal anal sex at an orgy even though she specifically told him she did not want to.
Strauss and thirteen other men are on trial for aggravated pimping at the Hotel Carlton in Lille. However, this prostitute known as “Mounia,” said the incident occurred in Paris. From The Independent:
The prosecution witness said she had made it clear that she was “very unhappy” at being asked to have anal sex. “I cried a lot….DSK must have been aware that I was unhappy,” she said.
Questioned on Mounia’s claim that she had “cried”, Mr Strauss-Kahn said that he had “no recollection that she refused in any way.”
Strauss-Kahn insisted the prostitute did not tell him to stop:
“If a woman says ‘no’, it’s ‘no’,” he said. Under questioning by the president of the court, Mr Strauss-Kahn conceded that “submission” and “domination” were “part of the game” at “swingers’ parties”.
Mounia may have shown some signs of “unwillingness”, he said – he could not remember the detail – “but she never objected”.
Unfortunately, as The Independent points out, the evidence is important because Strauss-Kahn told the court he did not know the women at his orgies were prostitutes. The orgies in question took place in Europe and Washington with powerful men. Strauss-Kahn admitted he attended the parties, but that this was his only involvement. From The New York Times:
But he said he had played no part in organizing them, and he insisted that he had not been aware that some of the women at the parties were prostitutes.
Given his position at the I.M.F., and his political ambitions, he said he would never have attended had he been aware of that fact. “It would’ve been far too dangerous,” he said, noting that prostitutes could have been susceptible to “pressures.”
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He said the festive nature of libertinage would have been sullied had he known that the women were being paid for sex. Supporting his case, Fabrice Paszkowski, a businessman accused of being one of the main organizers of the orgies, told the court on Tuesday that he had never told Mr. Strauss-Kahn that the women had been paid.
Jade, another prostitute, told the court she met with Strauss-Kahn in 2009 in Belgium at a swingers club. She walked into a room and “saw a scene she described as ‘butchery,’ with about 40 people ‘all on a mattress on the floor.’” Two businessmen paid her €500 to have sex with Strauss-Kahn, but she refused to join the orgy. She drove him and his girlfriend back to Brussels where they discussed a future meet-up. From The Guardian:
Jade said that in the car she had chatted to Strauss-Kahn and his girlfriend, explaining to them that she worked under contract at a swingers’ bar where she was a stripper and that after her act she had sex on stage with a member of the audience whom she was allowed to choose herself.
She told the court that Strauss-Kahn said he would like to come to watch the act one day. Jade said that because she had been paid by a businessman to have sexual relations with Strauss-Kahn, she felt obliged to honour her part of the deal and upon arrival in Brussels, went up to his hotel room with him and his girlfriend.
“When I turned my back to Dominique Strauss-Kahn I was subjected to a penetration that I hadn’t been asked if I accepted,” she explained to the court. “To which I would have said no, because I didn’t want that. Every time I see his photo or meet him I relive that time, a time that ripped me apart inside because no other client would have dared to do that. Does this person think they can do anything… because I didn’t have the same status as him?”
“I didn’t have time to say no.”
She told the court the sex act caused her pain. The prosecutor then asked if Strauss-Kahn knew she was a prostitute.
“To inflict what he inflicted, he couldn’t have had much respect for me,” she answered. “I must have been an object for his consumption.”
The disgraced politician “did not view” his orgy with Jade the way she did and attempted to brush it off the same way he did with Mounia.
“I didn’t realise,” he claimed. “I’m not for doing things that are disagreeable for partners. I had no way of knowing she didn’t want it… It wasn’t my intention, I’m sorry it happened like that.”
Strauss-Kahn’s history contains a number of other incidents of sexual misconduct. In May 2011, authorities arrested him at the JFK Airport in New York City after Nafissatou Diallo, a maid, accused him of sexual assault at a hotel in Manhattan. The charges included “criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and an unlawful imprisonment” on the 32-year-old maid. He resigned as head of the IMF a few days later. The charges were dropped after officials questioned her credibility. She filed a suit against him, which was settled in November 2012 for $6 million.